ACC Football Heavyweight Championship

A while back I ran across a site with an interesting premise for an alternative national championship for college football, what if the winner of the very first college football game between Rutgers and Princeton in 1869 was awarded the college football heavyweight championship belt? Then the whole poll system and rankings wouldn’t matter, whoever held the belt was the champ and the only way for another team to get it was to beat them on the field. To quote Ric Flair, “to be the man you gotta beat the man.”

The original site I ran across doesn’t seem to be around anymore, but there is another site you can check out here. They use a couple of different lineages but they all eventually merged and the current holder of the college football heavyweight title is the Oklahoma Sooners.

I know you’re curious, NC State has actually held the championship belt twice. State beat South Carolina in 1989 for the belt but lost to Virginia the next week. The Wolfpack won their 2nd belt in 1999 by beating Texas in Austin and held the belt for 3 weeks before dropping the belt to Florida State.

The title belt often bounces around a conference until a big non-conference matchup or a bowl game. This is the current situation, as six different Big 12 schools have held the title since my West Virginia Mountaineers hung 70 on Clemson in the Orange Bowl and also took their title belt.

So I decided to see if I could take the same concept and apply it to a title belt that stayed in the ACC. The ACC heavyweight championship belt would only be on the line in a game between 2 ACC schools (who were both members at the time). Going back through the schedules, it looks like the first ACC football game was between Duke and South Carolina on Sept 19, 1953. Duke won the game 14-0 and also won the belt.

It’s no big surprise that Florida State currently holds the belt and have owned it since Dec 1, 2012 after beating Georgia Tech in the ACC championship game* (in this universe, I guess this would be the ACC Division Winner Game For Bragging Rights Unless One Of The Teams Has The Championship Belt). The belt will next be defended on Sept 20 when Clemson goes to Tallahassee.

Here’s a look back at the recent history of the ACC title belt:

Current champ Florida State beat Georgia Tech 21-15 on 12-1-2012 in the ACC Championship Game*. The Seminoles have successfully defended their title every time in 2013, going 8-0 in league play and beating Duke in the ACC Championship Game* and have held the belt 648 days (as of today).

Georgia Tech beat North Carolina in a 68-50 shootout on 11-10-2012. They defended the belt against Duke, lost a non-title match against Georgia, then dropped the belt to Florida State.

North Carolina won the belt from NC State 43-35 on 10-27-2012 on the infamous Gio Bernard punt return TD. Carolina dropped the belt a week later to Georgia Tech.

NC State upset Florida St 17-16 on 10-6-2012 on Mike Glennon’s last minute TD pass and also took the title belt. The Pack defended the belt against Maryland before losing to Carolina.

Florida State beat Clemson 49-37 on 9-22-2012, won a non-title game against South Florida before losing to NC State

Clemson beat Virginia Tech 38-10 on 12-3-2011 in the ACC Championship Game* for both the ACC and national championship belts. As mentioned above, they lost the national belt to WVU in the Orange Bowl but carried the ACC title belt into the next season winning 3 non-title matches against Auburn, Ball State and Furman before losing to the Noles.

Before that, in 2011 both the national & ACC belts changed hands from Virginia Tech to Georgia Tech and back to Clemson (who won the national belt from Auburn)

Total Reigns
Clemson and NC State have both held the belt the most, 17 times. As of today Florida State has held the belt for the longest amount of time, 3909 days. The longest title reign was 1146 days by Florida State from 1992 to 1995. State’s longest title reign was over a year, 399 days from 9-15-1973 to 10-19-1974.

Clemson – 17
NC State – 17
North Carolina – 14
Maryland – 12
Duke – 11
Georgia Tech – 11
Florida St – 9
Wake Forest – 8
Virginia – 7
Virginia Tech – 6
South Carolina – 4
Miami – 3
Boston College – 2

I thought this was an interesting and fun alternative to the current polls and rankings, we’ll have to see if Oklahoma and Florida State can defend their championship belts in the coming weeks.

About WV Wolf

Graduated from NCSU in 1996 with a degree in statistics. Born and inbred in West "By God" Virginia and now live in Raleigh where I spend my time watching the Wolfpack, the Mountaineers and the Carolina Hurricanes as well as making bar graphs for SFN. I'm @wvncsu on the Twitter machine.

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Viewing 13 posts - 1 through 13 (of 13 total)
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  • #55903
    WV Wolf
    Keymaster

    A while back I ran across a site with an interesting premise for an alternative national championship for college football, what if the winner of the
    [See the full post at: ACC Football Heavyweight Championship]

    #55904
    Wufpacker
    Participant

    Wow WV, I bet that was a pain in the arse to go thru the ACC belt lineage, not to mention the associated stats (reigns/total days). Hat tip to you, Sir.

    #55906
    WV Wolf
    Keymaster

    Thanks, the associated stats are stuff I do for my job all the time so it wasn’t that big a deal. Going through the schedules took a little work but it was kinda interesting to see how it all played out.

    #55907
    PackFamily
    Participant

    Lol… this is all we got.

    Interesting work, WVW

    #55914
    TheCOWDOG
    Moderator

    Cool,WVW.

    I want my replica!

    #55917
    PackerInRussia
    Participant

    I like it. I vote for this system. Better than BCS, better than playoffs. Nice work, too.

    #55923
    bill.onthebeach
    Participant

    Hey WVWolf!

    Nice work…

    How long would it take to crank one of those out for Basketball ?

    #NCSU-North Carolina's #1 FOOTBALL school!
    #55926
    Prowling Woofie
    Participant

    Really nice work, WV…

    Hard to believe as inept as we’ve been in football, we top the list of belt holders 🙂

    #55931
    packbackr04
    Participant

    thats awesome! nice work WVW.

    #55985
    highstick
    Participant

    Can we hang some banners in CF????

    "Whomp 'em, Up, Side the Head"!

    #56011
    Khan
    Participant

    Cool concept. Get ready to bring that baby back to Raleigh I just a couple weeks!

    #56025
    SaccoV
    Participant

    I have been contemplating a valid response to this and the only thing that has been in my head since reading the post is how would we compare 70s-80s wrestlers to the current ACC programs. Here is my stupid response:

    Atlantic (The Crockett-in-Charlotte division)
    FSU = Ric Flair (19-time world champion) They are the man, were the man, and perhaps might always be the man.
    Clemson =
    BC = Larry Zybyszko — Great in other regions long ago, but basically an over-glorified contender.
    NC State = Black Jack Mulligan — 1979 was the last time this name meant much.
    WF = Dusty Rhodes — There was a massive spot on Rhodes gut which galls me to this day. And he only won the title by technicality.
    Louisville = Gene Anderson — Head twitch.
    Syracuse = Angelo Mosca — Who?

    Coastal (The Crocketts-Move-to-Dallas division)
    UN* = Tommy ‘Wildfire’ Rich — The girls might love him, but he never won when it counted.
    Duke = Ricky ‘the Dragon’ Steamboat — Not a true top dog but one most will pull for. Only challenged for the title a few times.
    Miami = Nikita Koloff — The Russian Sickle was deadly (Miami of the 80s) but his disappearance from earth mirrors Miami’s irrelevance in our conference.
    Va Tech = Harley Race — Great champion of yesteryear, but almost faded into complete obscurity. Hopefully resurgent, Race almost died but regained to championship form (read his book if you get a chance).
    UVa = Greg ‘the Hammer’ Valentine — Best known for his ability to look inebriated, the Hammer was a staple in the NWA but never much challenged for the title (USHWT doesn’t count.)
    Pitt = Johnny Valentine — Most don’t realize how much of a powerhouse they were. Now a forgotten champion.
    Ga Tech = Johnny Weaver — The sleeper hold is perhaps the worst finishing move in wrestling history (much like the triple option in CFB)

    Notre Dame = Haystacks Calhoun — Only good because he weighed 7 times what everyone else did (TV contract that no one else shares)!

    #56027
    SaccoV
    Participant

    Edit: Clemson = Tully Blanchard — World Television Champion. Great on TV but never the Numero Uno!

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